Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
